Do you want to change your Raspberry Pi to a gaming station? Do you want to enjoy NES, ATARI games on Raspberry Pi, then we have solutions with great customizations. Enjoy your old video games by building your retro-gaming console with a Raspberry Pi and a dedicated distribution. Whether you have missed the mark or you have deliberately refrained from diving into the madness of the Nintendo NES Mini lack of enough exciting games to your taste, nothing is lost. Enjoying your favorite old video games is always possible, and there are many solutions.
If you’re lucky enough to own a Raspberry Pi, building a cross-platform retrogaming console is a breeze. There are indeed dedicated distributions, simple to implement. That allows you to enjoy dozens of consoles, computers, and arcade, and the best titles in the history of video games. We have selected the best distributions to turn your Raspberry Pi into a universal retrogaming platform.
RecalBox
Among the distributions dedicated to retrogaming, RecalBox is undoubtedly the best known. Compatible with all versions of Raspberry Pi – by overclocking the processor on the Raspberry Pi 1. As it offers not only to create a retrogaming platform but also to enjoy your multimedia content through the integration of Kodi media center.
RecalBox excels with its extreme simplicity of installation that allows it to work almost instantly once installed. The distribution relies on RetroArch to offer a unified emulation platform. Its interface, perfectly licked, is based on EmulationStation2 and allows to move from one system to another with great ease.
RecalBox integrates 52 consoles and arcades, with the best known, the NES, the Super Nintendo, the Master System, the MegaDrive, the PlayStation, the PSP, the Amstrad and even the Dreamcast since the last update. These are often automatically installed in OTA.
The system also draws its strength in its many features. That will delight the most demanding players. RecalBox allows you to play five, supports several console consoles (Xbox 360, PS3, 8bitdo, etc.). And automatically retrieves all the information from the games you have imported. Starting a game and resuming it later is no longer a problem since a backup system has been built-in, even on consoles that did not have one. And it’s possible to rewind the game to modify an action that could have been you be fatal.
Download RecalBox for Raspberry Pi (Free)
retropié
With RecalBox, RetroPie is the other great reference for retrogaming on Raspberry Pi. Built around Rapsbian, Retropie also relies on EmulationStation for the interface and on RetroArch for emulators. The system, very similar to that proposed by RecalBox, also integrates the media center Kodi to enjoy your movies. That includes the movie series and music library on your TV, and its installation is also trivial.
RetroPie also offers compatibility with console controllers including SNES, Xbox 360 and PS3. And allows you to customize the controls according to the controller you connect. More than 50 consoles, kiosks, and other computers are supported by the system. Also, that offers the SEGA Dreamcast, Mega Drive, Master System and Game Gear, or the PS1, PS2, PSP.
Download RetroPie for Raspberry Pi (Free)
Lakka
Inspired by RetroPie and PiMAME, Lakka relies on RetroArch as well as on the architecture of the LibreELEC distribution. Rather sober, the latter is unified and has many advantages as the use of the automatic setting system controls controls natively present in RetroArch. The system also natively supports several wireless controllers. Such as the Xbox360, the DualShock 3 (PS3) and the 8bitdo controller.
As for the emulated consoles, we find among the best known, the Nintendo NES, Super NES, Game Boy, Gameboy Advance, Game Boy Color, N64 and DS, the SEGA Master System, Mega Drive, Game Gear and Dreamcast, or the PlayStation and the PSP.
No risk, therefore, to crash your entire installation. As for the updates, they do not rely on packages, but on the complete replacement of system and kernel files.
As for competing distributions, Lakkaallows to play simultaneously several. It also offers the ability to rewind a game so you can edit an action that would have made you lose.
Download Lakka for Raspberry Pi (Free)
HAPPI Game Center
Like RetroPie, HAPPI Game Center relies on Raspbian and revolves around EmulationStation to offer an intuitive user interface. Presented as the simplest retrogaming distribution and offering “the closest rendering of original machines” by its developer, HAPPI Game Center uses emulators that may be different than those offered in other distributions.
HAPPI Game Center integrates no less than 25 consoles (NES, Super NES, N64, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Master System, Mega Drive, PlayStation, etc.). Also, there are 5 arcade stations (Neo Geo, MAME, etc.), 5 computers (Amstrad CPC 6128, Spectrum ZX, Atari 8 Bit). And offers several additional bonuses including the ability to stream and control from the Raspberry Pi games Steam installed on PC. An ideal solution for enjoying Steam games on a large TV screen, provided you have a PC with a NVIDIA GameStream compatible graphics card.
The distribution natively supports several controller models like the PS2 (with USB adapter), PS3 / PS4 (wired), NE / Super NES USB, N64 USB, Xbox 360, Wii Classic, and more.
Download Happi Game Center for Raspberry Pi (Free)
ChameleonPi
ChameleonPi is a Raspbian-based distribution animated by a Python-developed in-house interface, displaying a carousel to scroll through the included systems. If some console emulators are offered in ChameleonPi , the distribution specializes more particularly in the emulation of personal computers.
We find a Gameboy emulator, NES, SNES and Megadrive. But especially an emulator for the ZX Sepctrum, Apple II, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC 464, Atari ST, or Atari 800. The system offers nearly twenty machines.
The installation of ChameleonPi is done in the same way as a conventional manual installation.
Download ChameleonPi for Raspberry Pi (Free)